


the eye of a storm

by ofjisoos (swelter)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: ???? I guess, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Domestic Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 15:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19154059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swelter/pseuds/ofjisoos
Summary: with married couple magician soonyoung and inventor-slash-alchemist junhui, life is always an adventure. this just so happens to be one of their more disastrous hijinks... unbeknownst to them.soonyoung manages to save the day, though he still can't avoid the arduous task of grocery-shopping in 'normal people clothes' that he claims suffocate his nether regions.(somewhat of a companion fic to Lovestruck, Again by woozdum.)





	the eye of a storm

**Author's Note:**

> WHAt is with me and posting snhui fic at ungodly hours of the night/morning...!! anyway this has been in my gdocs since 2017 (whew) and since it's jun day i felt like i could still cpr it and give it the life it deserves. btw the key event in this is an "extension" of Lovestruck, Again by woozdum so i recommend you read that beforehand for the.. uh full picture of this au
> 
> inspired by 171211 jun. #happy_jun_day #happy_cathui_day #happy_prince_jun_day #my_moonlight_jun <3

soonyoung wakes up to find that he’s rolled onto junhui’s side of the bed. it’s now cold in the latter’s absence, but the audible tinkering in the kitchen more than makes up for it.

 

even with his face half-buried in the pillow, which still smells vaguely of the floral scent of junhui’s shampoo, soonyoung manages to smile at the thought of a warm breakfast awaiting him just outside of the bedroom. sighing happily, soonyoung flips over onto his back and rubs the crust from his eyes to see a little better.

 

married life has been good to the two of them, despite it being an unlikely union. you see, junhui is staunchly a man of science, an inventor-slash-alchemist with his very own lab and workshop underground, whilst soonyoung is a whimsical force of nature, magic dust on his fingertips and an electricity unlike anything on this earth running through his veins. but being so different from common society, perhaps, is exactly what brought them together in the first place. they’re two pieces that don’t quite fit in the bigger picture, but together, they make their own small share of comfort, a found family within each other.

 

the two currently reside in a modest cottage, a little farther away from the nearest town. it’s for the best, really. soonyoung has enough trouble disguising his magical powers half of the time. his affinity towards donning wizard robes (which are decidedly much more comfortable and airy for his nether regions) doesn’t make him blend too well with the rest of the population. junhui’s sense of fashion is equally odd -- his signature look includes round glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, leather gloves with ticking watches embedded into the fabric, and a top hat adorned with an intricate design of small gears, a compass in the middle, and of course, the single raven’s feather stuck onto it as a finishing touch.

 

even their humble abode reflects their unorthodox lifestyle, what with the colourful fumes wafting periodically from the chimney throughout the day and the utter mess of varied gizmos and spellbooks and scrap metal and bottled potions strewn about the interior. apart from that, though, their domesticity as a young couple is as typical as any other. it’s demonstrated in the way junhui knocks softly on the door, calling out, “soonyoung, are you up? i made breakfast!”

 

stretching out his limbs, soonyoung takes his time to get out of bed. he splashes his face at the basin in the bathroom, and pads out into the sunlit space wherein a magnificent spread is laid out on the kitchen table. his eyes widen and his jaw drops as he takes his seat, taking in the fragrant steamed rice, and a multitude of side dishes around it.  

 

“you made this all on your own?”

 

“i had a little help,” junhui turns from the sink, where he’d been washing some dirtied dishes they’d abandoned from dinner last night. he grins the kind of smile that soonyoung knows all too well, the very one that threatens to break his face by how wide it is, a face of unadulterated excitement. “meet my latest invention,” he makes a grand gesture at a whizzing object flying into soonyoung’s line of vision from seemingly out of nowhere. its size is approximately similar to the small radio churning out chamber orchestra in the corner of the room -- it is a vaguely spherical, clunky thing with bionic arms holding some kind of baked dish, still fresh from the oven.

 

“good job,” junhui pats the contraption gently. it settles the dish carefully onto the crowded table, then zooms towards the electrical socket on the wall, into which it plugs its dangling wire. it remains dormant for the rest of the morning.

 

soonyoung’s still blinking dumbly as junhui settles opposite of him, picking up his utensils and readying himself to dig in. “you are _incredible_ , you know that?” soonyoung gapes at his partner, and receives a laugh in response. he gathers himself enough start picking bits from each different dish to load onto his plate.

 

“it needs some refinement,” junhui shrugs as he chews, “and a name. it’s kind of a work-in-progress, still. but i’m getting there.”

 

“it’s better than anything i could ever conjure up myself,” soonyoung points out. he glances at the machine, noting the soft whirring sound as it appears to recharge itself. he cycles through his list of endless questions in his head -- he can’t even begin to comprehend the complexity behind making such a thing, let alone getting it to actually function -- before picking one and voicing it out, “how do you even control it?”

 

“that’s because you have the convenience of having been born with magic, soonyoung,” junhui chuckles, “the rest of us aren’t so lucky.” he nods at a flat board laden with buttons soonyoung hadn’t noticed before, perched just next to the steaming kettle. “there’s the controller. i could get into the mechanics of it, but you told me just last night to refrain from doing so, because quote unquote, ‘it’ll only give me a headache’.” there’s a lilt that signifies his teasing in his words, but they’re still shrouded with affection.

 

“it’s true,” soonyoung shakes his head. he decides to save the questions for later, when his mind is a little bit more awake and he’s gotten enough food in his system to actually make himself useful.

 

the rest of breakfast is filled with idle chatter. junhui reminds soonyoung that it’s his turn to get the groceries for the week, to which soonyoung responds with a slight groan and a flick of the wrist towards the radio, turning the dial to silence the chamber music, which was only adding to his misery.

 

“just make sure to wear normal people clothes this time.”

 

“ _or_ i could walk into town as i usually dress, and everyone will hail me as their new fashion icon, then we can all comfortably walk around in robes that don’t choke the life out of our delicate parts,” soonyoung grumbles. his statement elicits a loud laugh from junhui. it makes him crack a smile despite himself.

 

“yeah, that is not about to happen anytime soon.” junhui’s done with his meal, scrapped off every last grain of rice in his bowl. he picks up the other empty dishes and washes them at the sink. soonyoung watches on as he continues eating. junhui’s lost a little weight, it seems, from all the sleepless nights he’d spent making and refining his myriad of inventions in his lab. it’s either that or his current preoccupation with the games on his ‘smartphone’, the light from the small screen ever-present by soonyoung’s side even in the wee hours in the morning lately. (sometimes he even hears junhui cooing over a new virtual cat he’s come across on ‘neko atsume’, of which its appeal soonyoung can actually comprehend.)

 

last night had been a break from that routine, however.

 

junhui was curled up in bed, eyes fixed on his phone and focus almost impossible to break, when soonyoung had sidled up to him and placed a sudden, very loud kiss on his cheek.

 

“agh!” junhui’s bottom lip jut out as he saw his pixelated character get beaten down by his opponent. “why’d you do that?” he cried out, throwing back his head and hitting the headboard a little too hard in the process.

 

“iiiiii am in need of attention,” soonyoung massaged the sore spot on junhui’s head, imitating his partner with his own pout. (he thought junhui’s was way cuter.) “you’ve been so busy the past few weeks, you’ve barely even looked my way!”

 

“that’s an exaggeration and you know it,” junhui replied, relishing in soonyoung’s comforting ministrations on his head. he flopped down to soonyoung’s lap, surrendering to his touch, as he always tended to do. “you know, you’re like a rat in a skinner box. but instead of insistently pressing the lever for food, it’s attention you always want.”

 

“i don’t know what that means, junnie. but that sounds like me, alright. though…” soonyoung frowned in thought, “can i be a hamster instead? rats are inarguably way less cuter.”

 

“hamster, then,” junhui chuckled, reaching to cup his hand on the lump of soonyoung’s cheek. “you do look like one.” he sighed. “fine, you’ve got my attention. what do you want to do?”

 

“i was thinking we could break out some wine from the cellar and just… talk.”

 

and that was exactly what they’d done, their conversations lasting well into the night. somewhere along the way, they’d abandoned their glasses of wine to dance together. it started out with some kind of upbeat tune, eventually dissolving into a more lowkey, piano-ballad to which soonyoung made himself home in junhui’s lanky arms as they swayed together. enveloped in a warm cloud of contentment, the two of them went to bed at nearly dawn, in a tangle of limbs, drifting off into a fitful slumber -- thus, a happy conclusion to an enjoyable night spent together.

 

soonyoung feels full. it’s the hearty breakfast he’s just had, but it’s also the fondness he feels for junhui even after all these years. they’d first met at a very young age, two souls lost in the sea of others unlike them. at the time, all soonyoung wanted to be was normal. but he decides now that he very much prefers his and junhui’s brand of normal, even if the rest of society doesn’t feel the same way.

 

that doesn’t make his impending trip to the grocery store any less unpleasant, however.

 

“do you have a shopping list?” soonyoung calls out as he washes his own dishes, hearing junhui putter around in the living room adjacent to the kitchen.

 

“uh, yeah, i’ll hand it to you in a minute!” junhui sounds a bit distracted. slightly distressed, even.

 

snickering, soonyoung turns off the tap of the sink and wipes his hands on the towel hanging over the dish rack. “don’t worry, i’m not planning to leave without it.” the consequences of that situation are dire -- he knows this from previous experience, when he’d come home with too many bundles of snacks that ended up being ingested by both of them to the point of delirium. since that particular incident, junhui’s made it a point to come up with a shopping list, though neither of them can ever resist sneaking in at least one snack of choice on it.

 

junhui’s head pops into view from the edge of the door. “hey, do you happen to know where i put the de-aging soap? i can’t seem to find it.”

 

the de-aging soap was junhui and soonyoung’s joint creation, chemistry and magic mixed together to birth an invention they hope to bring into the market soon. it’s still in its infancy, however. the soap, at its current state, easily takes off of 20 to 30 years off of a person’s life upon usage. more tweaks have to be made in order to reduce such a drastic change -- they are, after all, attempting to target the average consumer simply aiming to erase some wrinkles and white hair off of their aging physique, not turn them into teenagers again.

 

“um...” soonyoung blanks out. a foreboding, sick feeling stirs up in his gut.

 

“soonyoung…” junhui grows serious, which is a rare occurrence. which also means that they may just be in deep trouble. “what did you do?”

 

“you know, i- i can’t remember,” soonyoung desperately sifts through his memory of the night before, but every image conjured is hazy at best. “we did have a lot of wine last night.”

 

“well, maybe try to retrace your steps? what did we do right before we went to sleep?”

 

“we were… dancing?”

 

“yeah, but i also distinctly remember you using some magic, too,” junhui taps his chin in thought, “maybe something went wrong?”

 

 _oh no_. soonyoung slaps his forehead. a memory, though somewhat distant, comes up to the forefront of his mind upon junhui’s prompt. “i think… i used a teleportation spell.” he vaguely remembers a gazebo, candlelit and overlooking a serene lake. it was there that they had spent a few drunken moments looking up at the stars and the full moon, soonyoung’s head in the crook of junhui’s shoulder. soonyoung has no doubt that they’d ended up in several other places before ending up in their desired destination last night. (his teleportation magic skills _have_ been somewhat rusty since they’d moved closer to the rest of human civilization.) and the soap had been in the pocket of his robes, which means that there is a very good chance that it might have slipped out in the chaotic process of their teleportation.

 

“you what?!” junhui marches back into the kitchen, eyes wide as he stares at soonyoung in disbelief.

 

“junnie, shh,” soonyoung waves his hands, then grabs junhui’s shoulders in an attempt to placate him. or himself. maybe both. “i’ll get it back. don’t you worry.”

 

“how are you going to do that?”

 

“i’ll use the same spell i did yesterday to go back to that place!” soonyoung pauses, “or several places, i guess. the ones we briefly visited before the gazebo.”

 

“ohhhh, the gazebo!” junhui nods, a light of recognition sparking up in his eyes. “i remember _that_. but do you remember our other stops? we were only in each place for a few seconds at most.”

 

soonyoung goes to sit back at the dining table, thinking hard. even with all of his magic, nothing beats the memory-distorting effects of an alcohol-addled brain. still, it all slowly comes back to him. yes, he remembers an abandoned shopping mall (“creepy,” junhui had said)... a closed, musty-smelling secondhand bookstore… and... a bathtub?

 

he looks up at junhui. “i think i know where it is.”

  
  
  


_of course_ their deaging soap had made it into someone else’s bathroom.

 

what are the odds?

 

the incantation worked, thank _merlin_ \-- soonyoung was almost worried that he wouldn’t be able to get back to the locations he and junhui had been the night before. magic is fickle, often working in ways that are hard to predict, but soonyoung’s mastery of it pays off when he manages to retrace his steps and teleport back to the mall, then the bookstore, and lastly, the bathroom. the very same one, with clean tiled walls and the slight smell of lavender in the air.

 

he stands still for a second, listening for any human activity outside of the bathroom. it’s quiet, but he can’t afford to let his guard down. all he has to do is search for the soap, pocket it, and bring it back home without a hitch. an intrusion would be unwelcome to both him and any resident of the house. so after a few moments, soonyoung starts rummaging around, careful to not make any noise as he does so.

 

“where are you… where are you…” soonyoung mutters, pulling out and pushing drawers back in. he knows that in the wrong hands -- or any other normal person’s hands, really -- the soap can spell out disaster for them. he can only hope that whoever it is that lives in this house has been so put off by the hot pink colour of the soap bar that they have avoided using it entirely. or else, soonyoung will have to somehow take it upon himself to fix things (and he is, admittedly, not the best at fixing things).

 

pushing aside the shower curtain, soonyoung steps into the bathtub. he surveys the various bath and body products on the shelf, taking note of the hair-loss treatment shampoo amongst them. _don’t you worry, homeowners_ , he thinks absently, _once junhui and i refine the formula, this soap will be perfect for you_. just not at _this_ point of time.

 

the soap is hard to miss once soonyoung pushes aside the plethora of products in the front shielding it from view. “aha!” he says triumphantly, possibly a little too loudly. clamping a palm over his mouth, he carefully slips the soap into his robe pockets. now, to get back. he closes his eyes and starts muttering the spell under his breath, gathering his concentration and willing himself to create a tear in the atmosphere -- a vortex, to go home to junhui and rejoice in the fact that the soap is safe and sound in their possession once again.

 

the loud bang of the door opening stops him in the middle of his spell.

 

a man stands in the doorway, looking very confused and almost in awe. “what the…”

 

soonyoung freezes. any small movement, and he’s sure the other man is going to hurl a dangerous object at him in self-defence, possibly mistaking him for a robber. despite his spell being unceremoniously interrupted, the vortex is appearing in a slow yawn, and so soonyoung quickly continues where he’d left off, heart beating wildly in his chest as he mumbles the right combination of words to widen it for access back to his own world.

 

everything seems to happen in slow motion -- the young man opens his mouth, about to turn away to call out for someone outside of the bathroom, and soonyoung takes the split-second opportunity to slip back into the vortex behind him. the gap fits his slight figure just right, and as the alternate world begins spinning out of sight, he hears:

 

“MINGYU, THE BATHTUB WIZARD IS REAL-- YOU GOTTA COME HERE, HOLY FU--!”

 

it soon fades out into oblivion, the sound drowned out by a deafening rumbling in his ears. his teeth chatter throughout the length of the travel, and he has to screw his eyes shut to prevent the whipping air in his face from attacking his eyeballs.

 

when soonyoung opens his eyes, he finds himself back in junhui’s lab. he’s got the wind knocked out of him, panting heavily as junhui approaches him with a concerned frown. before he can even give his husband a chance to steady his frail figure, soonyoung collapses onto the floor in a heap.

 

“i got it,” soonyoung manages to wheeze from the carpet that had mercifully broken his fall, brandishing the soap in the air. “i got it.”

 

junhui crouches beside him, stroking his hair in consolation. “did anyone see you?” he takes the soap from soonyoung and pockets it -- evidently, making soonyoung feel better is his priority at the moment.

 

“yes,” soonyoung relishes the therapeutic massages of junhui’s fingers against his scalp, suddenly finding the carpet quite comfortable to lay on. “i’m apparently known in another life as ‘the bathtub wizard’.”

 

“that’s not _too_ far from the truth,” junhui huffs out in amusement. hooking his arms under soonyoung’s armpits, he helps him up, “steady…” and leads him to the nearest chair. “‘well, let’s just hope we didn’t cause too much damage.”

 

soonyoung puffs out his cheeks, exhaling and slumping against the chair. “i hope so, too.”

 

“my hero,” junhui fondly wraps his arms around soonyoung’s shoulders, squeezing him and placing a gentle kiss on his temple. “you still have to go grocery-shopping, though.”

 

soonyoung groans.


End file.
